Morgan heard the deep fondness beneath the gentle mockery and almost envied Snenneq such a forgiving love, but he was distracted by wondering what this whole adventure had been about. This was exactly why Father Nulles warned against fortune-telling, of course, that it was not only foreign and sinful, but never accurate. Because if the troll’s words were true, something he had long expected would not come to him—and that could only mean the kingdom.
A prince and heir who does not become king, he thought. Like my father, who died young. “Are we finished, then?” he asked out loud, doing his best to keep his voice level. “Because I am so cold you may have to carry me down in a casket if we stay up here much longer.”
The trolls were quiet on the long way back down to where Porto was waiting. That was fine with Morgan, who had nothing to say and no urge to hear anything more until he had poured a sufficiency of wine into his belly to thaw his frozen heart.
Despite his weariness and a great deal of drink, as well as the comfort of Baron Narvi’s own bed, it took Simon a long time to fall asleep in the middle of the great hall with so many of his courtiers and servants sleeping around him. It had been long since he had slept like this, surrounded by many others, hearing so many taking breath, murmuring, even talking in the depths of dreams. As he lay in the dark clutching Binabik’s talisman, the sounds they made plunged him back into memories of his youth, when he had slept piled in with the other scullions like so many loaves rising in the vast Hayholt kitchen.
? ? ?
Simon supposed that thinking of the past had somehow led him there, because soon he found himself roaming through the dark corridors and shaded grounds of that selfsame Hayholt, the great castle where he had grown up. To his surprise, the silent girl Leleth that he and Miriamele had known so long ago was with him, as if she and he had both been drawn to this lost place by some powerful call. He wanted to ask her what brought her back to the Hayholt, where she had once been Miriamele’s handmaiden before the evil days descended on the castle, but the girl would not stay for him no matter how he called. Always she hurried just ahead, her skirts swaying as she moved in and out of shadows like a leaf caught on the breeze.
He followed Leleth down a long, covered passage that was a bit like the old tunnel between the stables and the outer keeps, but somehow was also a tree-canopied path through the woods around Da’ai Chikiza, the fairy city that had been swallowed by Aldheorte Forest centuries before Simon had been born. He and Miriamele and Binabik had floated through its dappled green tangle on a boat Valada Gelo? had given them. Leleth had not been with them on that real journey, since she had been attacked by savage Norn hounds while fleeing the Hayholt, had nearly died from her wounds, and had never found her voice again. When Simon and the others left Gelo?, who had given them all shelter and counsel, the little girl had stayed behind with the wise woman. In later days, Simon had sometimes seen Leleth again in dreams, both the waking and sleeping sort, so it was not too surprising to encounter her now, in this strange place full of shadows and half-ghosts. And only in dreams had Simon ever heard her voice, as he heard it again now.
“Beware the children,” she called back to him. “They are being called.”
“What children?” he asked, or thought he did, but his dream was full of voices and he was not sure if he had truly spoken. “What children?”
Leleth stepped through a gaping archway that Simon was sure had not been there a moment before, a dark space between two trees. All that remained was her voice.
“The children.” It floated to him as though from the depths of a forgotten well. “They are dead.” But even as those words chilled him, he thought he might be mistaken, that she might have called something else from the darkness—“the children are death,” or “the children all dread.” “Leleth, where are you?” he cried. “What are you saying?” But the darkness between the trees was empty and silent.
Still moving in dreamy half-flight, as though only his eyes and ears were alive and connected to his teeming, confused thoughts, he followed her into the empty, dark place even as a part of him saw where he was going and tried desperately to stop him
It’s a cave, he thought. It’s a hole. There’s a monster inside it. It’s a grave.
Indeed, somehow he knew that what had at first seemed only a shadow between two tree trunks was something quite different—a passage lined with crumbling earth. Just when his terror became so great that he could not imagine going any farther, a line glowed into existence before him, a vertical stripe of light like a single sunbeam arrowing down to earth. His fear suddenly lessened, he found himself moving toward it, and as he did the light spread side to side, like great, radiant butterfly wings, but for one clot of black near the bottom.
A part of him understood that the glowing butterfly was made by doors opening in a dark room, allowing light to pour in, but at first it illuminated nothing. Then he saw that the clot of blackness was something standing in that light. After a moment Simon recognized it as a child’s shape—a familiar child’s shape.
“John Josua?” He moved closer. The boy stood motionless in the open doorway, arms spread to hold the doors open. Sleeping figures lay everywhere before the child’s feet, and Simon was confused. Somehow he had found his way back to the old dormitory where the scullions slept. But what was John Josua doing here? He had never been a kitchen-worker like his father. In fact, it was strange that he could be a child at the same time that Simon himself was somehow a child. Had time itself been tipped sideways?
“Son?” He took a few steps closer, but John Josua seemed deep in thought. Simon did not look down—he was afraid to take his eyes off his son—but stepped as carefully as he could over the sleeping figures that lay between them. Some of the sleepers stirred and groaned, but none of them awoke.
Now he noticed another puzzle: for some reason, the floor of the great kitchen was covered with grass. It even seemed to be growing on top of the sleepers.
“Johnno? John Josua?” Simon drew nearer, and now could see the boy’s head well enough to recognize the unforgettable swirl of his cowlick. He thought he would collapse under the weight of terror and joy. What had brought him back? And was he to be Simon’s son again, or was Simon now to be his? John Josua had died, but Simon hadn’t. Who was oldest?
The children are waking up, Leleth’s voice called from somewhere, faint as a soft breeze through an unmown field. They are being summoned back. Beware . . . !
Some of the sleepers stirred, moving restlessly under the thick blanket of green that now covered them. Simon took one more step until he was close enough to touch the child-shape, and reached out to cup John Josua’s chin in his hands, to look his lost son in the face.
But when he turned to his father, the child’s eyes were black, the empty black of nothingness, of the end of all things.
Simon tried to scream, but couldn’t. Suddenly the boy, his son, began to vanish, draining away into the ground like dark water from a leaking cistern. Only as Simon clutched at the vanishing essence did he finally discover his voice, crying his only child’s name over and over even as John Josua became nothingness.
? ? ?
He was surrounded by lights, flickering, unsteady lights. The torches were all around him and more were coming, like fiery birds hastening to a shared meal. So bright! He blinked, and realized he was holding something in his hands. He looked and saw his fingers were clutching a scrap of white fabric.
“Simon!” It was Miriamele from somewhere behind him. The light was in his eyes, and he was confused, aching. John Josua! He had held him, had if only for a sliver of an instant touched his dead son again, and here was proof . . . ! “Simon,” his wife cried, “wake up!”
She stood before him now, her familiar face the only ordinary thing in a mob of strangers. He was surrounded, and for a startled moment he felt like a beast at bay, crowded by the hunters who would take his life. Then he saw that one of them was a woman, her arms around a boy of no more than six or seven years, a slender child with something of John Josua’s leanness but darker hair. The child was crying and his nightshirt was in tatters. Simon realized with growing horror that the child’s gown was made of the same material as the torn scrap in his hand.
“What . . . ?” Simon looked around, saw Tiamak and a few others he recognized, found Miri again. “What happened here?”
His wife took his arm and led him away from the great double doors, back into the depths of the hall. “You had a dream, husband, a very bad dream.”
“John Josua . . . I thought he was John Josua, come back. Leleth tried . . .” Simon could not remember all that had happened, but he was certain it was important. “It’s the children. Leleth tried to tell me . . .”